Hey so a couple months ago I started playing World of Warships. That combined with somewhat recent christening of the Zumwalt class has sparked my interest in how war ships were designed at different time periods and what governed or influenced those designs.
I'm just looking for some documentaries or some light reading on the topic. I've found a few YouTube videos that cover specific classes but so far no luck on an overall theory/principle/train of thought.
Oh I should also say I'm specifically interested in ships designed and built from around 1900 to present day.
In many ways warship design philosophy has changed over time with technological considerations being a factor.
Ancient era ships had to be designed with the ability to survive voyages, while currently that really isn't a worry anymore because people know enough about naval architecture to consistently build new ships that won't sink. I would suggest searching for articles about Naval architecture, but you might get a lot of technical information.
What I can tell you about modern warship design is that the ships are designed around specific missions sets the ship is supposed to accomplish, weapons systems to go on the ship, future considerations and upgrades, and new technologies navies want to use. In the case of the Zumwalt, we were designed around a specific RADAR cross-section requirement, noise requirements, and were required to be able to produce enough energy to power the railgun and laser weapons the Navy is preparing to bring into the fleet. There were further technologies that the Navy wanted to incorporate into the ship as well.
A key thing to note is it takes 15-20 years to design a new warship from scratch to completion and ships generally have a shelf life of 50 years in an up to date navy. So design of a new ship needs to start about 20-30 years before the current class of ship that is going to be replaced actually starts getting phased out.
Source, I'm a crewmember of the Zumwalt, and get to hear about and discuss shipbuilding pretty regularly. I hope that helps.
I suggest you start reading about "line of battle" / "ships of the line" from the age of sail. Read about their guns, then how they evolved during the age of steam and then how, during the end of the 19th century, the armored or so called "battleships" became a standard.